The Second Coming of Joan

From the author of The Painter: A Novella Based on True Stories (2022) comes Lopez’s second novella. Nadja is a childhood survivor of the Bosnian War in the 1990s. Her happy life in Sarajevo, with her parents and younger brother, was forever shattered by the invasion of Serbian Forces. The first line, “Nadja didn’t know she was Muslim until the war started,” sets forth the complete destruction of the life she knew as an eight-year-old. Religion and religious books were oppressed under this communist regime. While the family is hiding in their apartment building’s basement, Nadja finds some hidden books, including the Bible and the Qur’an. She is drawn to a book about Joan of Arc, begins to read it, and starts to pray, like Joan. Her prayers are innocent and fueled by pure faith and imagination. In response, God decides to do a new thing and sends Joan to the spiritual realm above earth to engage in spiritual warfare, an occupation previously given to angels in male form. Joan interacts with Nadja, demons, and angels as she guides Nadja and her family on a journey through prison camp, and a refugee odyssey, that takes years and thousands of miles before they arrive in their new home in the Netherlands.